Quick SEO Talks: Algorithm Updates & Strategies

Spontaneous discussion on practical strategies for adapting technical architectures to frequent algorithm shifts.

Speakers: Yiğit Konur, Ozan Ketenci, Erdal Çay

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Yiğit KonurinQuick SEO Talks

15 Feb 2017

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⏱ 13 min read• 2,263 words

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— Hey everyone. Today we're talking about JavaScript frameworks. More precisely, how client-side frameworks relate to SEO on the JavaScript side. And of course, the first thing everyone thinks of. JavaScript and SEO sound like two worlds apart. But these days, these technologies improve the user experience. So they're getting really popular. That's why three Zeo consultants are digging into this together. I'm Deniz Yiğit Konur.

— I'm Ozan Ketenci.

— I'm Erdal Çay.

— Today I really want to talk about one thing. What do you think about these conversion-focused business models? E-commerce especially. How is that shift going in Turkey and worldwide? What kind of cases have you seen around this?

— When you look at this, there's clearly a shift toward JavaScript. Big e-commerce sites all run into the DOM problem. The DOM gets huge. The HTML gets huge. That causes serious performance issues on the server side and the user side. But as everyone knows, JavaScript lets us solve that much more easily.

— More dynamically, really.

— Exactly. Let's talk about a big navigation bar on an e-commerce site. If you fill the whole thing with HTML elements, you're not creating items on trigger. You create every item up front. Then you just show them when something triggers. And at the end of the day, the DOM balloons. That's the space where the browser parses your HTML top to bottom and builds the result. If I'm not wrong, this hits mobile way more than desktop.

— And of course, it causes way bigger problems on mobile. Our desktop speeds are just better. That's the only reason, really. Mobile internet speeds in Turkey aren't that high right now. So you can run into serious issues.

— On the other hand, if we're talking about JavaScript, it's code that gets executed browser-side. So it eats our CPU and RAM on the browser side too. Along with connection speed, that piece matters a lot. When we think JavaScript, we usually just think Angular JS, React, and frameworks like that. But today there's a Google-backed program behind progressive web apps. The results are incredible. And JavaScript is a serious force behind it. On that note, if I'm not mistaken, Google has pushed a few case studies lately.

— One of them is work they did with Flipkart. Flipkart is an Indian e-commerce site. Look at the business results after their PWA rollout. Crawlability improved dramatically. We're seeing huge wins on site speed too. Naturally, that pays off for users and for sellers alike. It helps whoever owns the e-commerce site. You can see it directly in the lift on conversion rates.

— The numbers are pretty impressive. On the old mobile experience, users stuck around about 70 seconds. Today we're talking 3.5 minutes. Flipkart is one of the leading e-commerce sites in India, if I'm not mistaken. So that means users are seeing more products. They're staying engaged a lot longer.

— Exactly right.

— PWA has plenty of other advantages. If you want to look at PWA examples, head to pwa.rx. It works on Android phones first and foremost. And if I'm not mistaken, on Chrome for Apple devices too.

— It works in Chrome. It doesn't work in Safari.

— Yeah, behind PWA there's actually something called Service Workers. It's a middle layer between the server and the browser. Not every browser supports this. But today it's in pretty much all Androids. If I'm not wrong, Firefox and Chrome have it too. There's only a support problem on the Safari and Apple side right now. But as the tech spreads, that'll get solved too. The technology brings a lot of advantages. It's not just speed. You can add it to your home screen without building an app.

It sits there like you installed an app. Offline browsing, incredible interactions. If you have an Android phone, try flipkart.com. You can also test it on desktop through Chrome. The results are genuinely incredible. So how do you think SEO compatibility works on that side? I mean, Angular JS is a technology Google built. Google supports it. Everyone ends up with this perception in their head. If Google supports a technology, it must be core-ready for SEO too. But do those departments really work that closely together?

— Here's how I see it. SEO, I mean Google, is in robotics now. It's in machine learning too. They're obviously not building all that tech just for SEO. Sure, that's how we always knew them. But no. Google built it doesn't mean the tech is SEO proof. But there's this. This is where the web is headed. Users want it. That's why we're getting Angular JS, React, and a bunch of other tech. Are they SEO friendly right now? Google has made statements about that before.

Stuff like "you can handle this with prerender." Later they deprecated that advice. They said you don't need it. Around then they had also pushed Angular JS pretty far along. But look at JavaScript sites today. Google still struggles to index them. And even when it indexes, rendering correctly is hard.

— Here's a guess we can make though. Google updates everything to improve search results. Same story with client-side frameworks. The motivation is user focused again. Look at the PWA numbers in Flipkart's case study. The one who wins most is the user. Engagement data shows it. The lifts in conversion rates show it too.

— Philosophically, really.

— Absolutely. Google's user-first approach is enough of a signal. Sooner or later, this whole thing lands in a SEO friendly place. I think we can call that now.

— I completely agree. Here's the basic thing that sits in a user's head. Sure, JavaScript-heavy frameworks improve the experience. But today? Find me a SEO consultant who'd recommend a client move to a client-side framework with a clear conscience. You could honestly call that person a warrior. It's really hard. Staying that focused and actually pulling it off. But today you can even take Screaming Frog and flip a couple of small settings. Suddenly it renders JavaScript. On the other hand, start doing that at high scale. Your computer's fans kick in immediately.

So indirectly, that tells us something. There's no technological barrier behind Google getting into this, or not wanting to. They're probably approaching it this way to optimize their own resources. One of the main reasons we focused on this early was that we wanted to understand that need. Because the world really is heading here. Incredible case studies keep coming out. And Google backs those case studies. So I think we need to internalize this properly. On that note. What can a marketer do who's strong on SEO but not on the technical side? How can they be bold when jumping into JavaScript work?

It's honestly not an easy process.

— I think you absolutely need to consult people who are JavaScript experts. And this is a process that has to move forward with both teams. The marketing team and the software development team together. Both sides need an equal voice at the table. Software teams bring their controls. Marketing and SEO folks bring theirs. They need to lay them out and meet in the middle. Of course, you still have to move carefully here. Like you said, Flipkart may be a very successful example. But taking steps like this on very large-scale sites still looks risky to me.

— I'm with you on that side. But IT has to be willing to work with marketing too. You know we work with a lot of clients. We love all of their IT departments. They really do great work. But like every marketing department, it's rare to find one with great IT communication. Here's the thing though. The IT director, especially at the CTO level, needs to understand the value of SEO. That's how they can really support the marketing department on this. But your point is a big one. We've already lived through this, as you know.

Our own experience shows one thing. Put a JavaScript consultant in the SEO seat. Suddenly they can tell you exactly what's doable. What needs fixing. What the actual problems are. And they can offer alternative solutions too. On the React side, we know Airbnb is actively working on this exact issue.

— Now there's a real performance concern here. Tons of companies worldwide want to move to JavaScript. They want to tap into the power of JavaScript frameworks. But these blockers create a problem on the other side. If I'm not mistaken, Airbnb ran a study on this too.

— Exactly. Airbnb serves yet another framework to its users alongside an isomorphic app. Here's what happens with an isomorphic app. You get an initial load. So the first time you hit the site, it ships you the full HTML. But say you click something from there. Click a different button, and no HTML gets loaded again at all. That client-side rendering layer underneath kicks in.

— And they managed to keep this SEO-friendly too. There are even details about it on Airbnb's blog. I think it's a good step for the industry. Seeing big companies like Airbnb, who grow on organic. Take this on and invest in it looks exciting. But of course, the picture isn't always this rosy. There also seem to be some roadblocks that JavaScript brings. Maybe we can talk a bit about those.

— One thing Google still hasn't solved, despite all this progress. Is that Ajax calls can't be interpreted. When we look at case studies like this, we see something clear. Google can't interpret or build the content that comes after Ajax calls. It can't render it, even if you use a client-side framework.

— There was actually a test about this. You showed it to me.

— Absolutely. You can find it easily. Here's the test. Picture a page. The page is just a counter running on JavaScript. We hit "fetch and render as Google" in Search Console. The screenshot we got was frozen at 5.0 seconds.

— So the JavaScript starts at 0 and counts up. It counts forever. But the screenshot stops at 5.

— Yes, the screenshot stops at 5. Here's what that means. After the fifth second, Google Bots stop crawling. Call it a side effect of Ajax. Google still hasn't solved it most of the time.

— That's a good point you raised. Same story on the Angular JS side, like we said. If you don't build the right configuration directly, you may not get results. If you have nothing to add on these obstacles, I think we can move on. So I think there's very little written about this for an SEO consultant. BuildVisible has a few resources. They put out really good work. Even Google doesn't offer serious documentation here. There used to be a thing about Ajax's old crawling scheme.

Like Ozan said, that got deprecated. The topic fell off the radar. And we don't see clear documentation on that side either. Here I think the tests we run really matter. Again, like you said, we work with the IT department on these tests. Then we can easily see one thing. How many technologies can IT actually plan to use here? If there are 5 different technologies and all 5 give us similar results. We need to approach it in a truly test-driven way for SEO. That's how we see every result here. This JavaScript indexing process really isn't easy. But I think it's a fun adventure for people who've been in SEO for years.

— Absolutely. We need to start putting thought into it now.

— Absolutely, that's right.

— I've said this before. I still think user-focused work always pays off.

— You remember the Michael King piece too. There was an article called Technical SEO Renaissance. It nails exactly what you're describing. We marketers can't wear blinders anymore. We have to widen our technical perspective. We need to get closer to the customer. Because at the end of the day, IT wants the same thing as marketing. Get close to conversion. Get close to the user.

— Absolutely.

— Exactly. I agree with you there. Last time we went to Search Console, they talked about ranking factors. Marcus Tober, the founder of Searchmetrics, was there. He said they now split things by technology. They said they run into JavaScript a lot.

— Are they running a separate correlation on JavaScript?

— I asked him about that specifically. He said he didn't see a different correlation. So if you use JavaScript, well... But he said they know the positive effects of site copy. So JavaScript frameworks end up having a bit of an indirect impact there.

— Yeah. Searchmetrics providing data on this is really valuable for us. Because the clearest data-driven take here probably comes from either Semrush or Searchmetrics. Their recent focus has really been studying ranking factors in this sense. On that note. I think this topic will get discussed a lot over the next three years. So if we want to be strong SEO consultants. We need to broaden our perspective here too. Anything you'd like to add?

— Thank you.

— I think it was a great conversation too. Thanks so much for sharing your thoughts. That's all we have for now on JavaScript frameworks. If you have questions, drop them in the comments anytime. See you on the next show.

— See you soon.

— Take care.

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